Doomsday Clock Moves 2 Minutes To Midnight – “Imminent Doom”
Scientists have moved the hands of the “Doomsday Clock” closer to midnight, signifying that “imminent doom” is on the horizon.
As of 25 Jan. 2018, the clock sits at two minutes to midnight. The last time the clock was this close to Armageddon was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
“Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe,” said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “This is the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.”
USA Today reports: Each year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit group that sets the clock, decides whether the events of the previous year pushed humanity closer or farther from destruction.
The symbolic clock is now the closest it’s been to midnight since 1953. It was also two minutes to midnight in 1953 when the hydrogen bomb was first tested.
“We’ve made the clear statement that we feel the world is getting more dangerous,” said Lawrence Krauss, chair of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors and director of Arizona State University’s Origins Project. “The danger of nuclear conflagration is not the only reason the clock has been moved forward.”
The announcement was made in Washington, D.C., at the National Press Club.
Scientists blamed a cocktail of threats ranging from dangerous political rhetoric to the potential of a nuclear threat as the catalysts for moving the clock closer toward doomsday.
The statement explaining the resetting of the time of the Doomsday Clock notes: “In 2017, world leaders failed to respond effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago — and as dangerous as it has been since World War II.
“The greatest risks last year arose in the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program appeared to make remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks for itself, other countries in the region, and the United States,” the statement continued.
“Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions on both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.”
“On the climate change front, the danger may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the long run require urgent attention now. The nations of the world will have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of meeting this challenge,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said.
“Today’s Doomsday Clock announcement must serve as an urgent wake-up call — and could be the last one we get,” said Derek Johnson, the executive director of Global Zero, a group that wants to eliminate nuclear weapons.
“Last year, the Clock ticked forward largely in response to candidate Trump’s alarming campaign rhetoric. But the reality of a nuclear-armed President Trump running loose in the world is worse than we feared, and that is clearly a central factor in this decision,” Johnson said.
The closer to a setting of midnight it gets, the closer it’s estimated that a global disaster will occur. The farthest it’s been from midnight was in 1991 as the Cold War ended when the clock was 17 minutes to midnight.
The clock has been maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947. The group was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project.
The scientists created the clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the Earth.
42 things that we should be aware of but no one is talking about (that will contribute to speeding up of the Doomsday).
- The entire media being owned by five+/- large corporations.
- That we live in the safest time in history and bad eating habits are more likely to kill you than criminals, terrorists, and enemy soldiers.
- Acidification of the oceans.
- The slave markets in Libya still haven’t been acknowledged by the media, as far as I know.
- well, there were leaked some audios from the brazil’s president being openly corrupt. it was some months ago and he still in the presidency
- Super gonorrhea! It’s a mutant strain that is spread via oral sex and is thus far not able to be cured except with extremely powerful, still-being-developed antibiotics.
- On July 23rd 2012 a coronal mass ejection crossed Earth’s orbit. It missed us by 9 days.
It would have taken out most of our electronics worldwide and taken us up to 10 years to recover. Bear in mind, electronics means everything from Reddit and TV to our power and water supplies.
I have bought some extra tins of beans just in case. - Soil losing nutrients like phosphorus and magnesium.
Edit* to many grab more attention, the stuff in soil that crops and plants need to grow, is going bye bye. - Penicillin and many anti bacterial treatments are losing much of their effectiveness and will eventually be completely ineffectual.
- The potential for honey bee and other pollinator species going extinct. This has catastrophic implications for life as we know it. The warning signs have been there for decades. Human activity is suspected to be the main cause.
- Why most college kids are going through insane levels of depression…more than half of the classmates I talk to are on some form of antidepressant
- Paracetamol is the number one reason for active liver failure.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1403265/ - Madagascar is currently experiencing a plague. A proper ‘black death’ plague.
- Something that I personally think no one is really talking about is how in the states, the education system is woefully outdated. The modern education system doesn’t do much to promote critical thinking skills. Standardized tests that decide funding are the norm, and teachers just teach to those tests, so students just memorize some things here and there. There needs to be a complete revamp of the system; the current one was designed in the 20th century, for the 20th century. But it needs to be designed in the 21st century, for the 21st century. Focus needs to be put on interpreting and processing massive amounts of information, understanding concepts and not formulas, basic logic classes to point out inherent flaws in arguments, basic programming should be a class offered in all high schools nowadays, and god dammit, a fucking basic journalism course to combat propaganda coming at us from all sides.
Navigating the wealth of information out there without these skills being taught is like trying find your way around the pacific ocean on a canoe without an oar. The way we think about education needs to change or society will begin to stagnate.
ETA: To the people blaming the problems with the education system on the side that you don’t agree with: thanks for proving my point. - Farm murders in South Africa
- It’s the 1% who cause dissension in our ranks. While we are all calling each other names and protesting each other, they’re laughing all the way to the bank, paying people to do their bidding, passing legislation that hurts all of us but fattens their pockets. And people like you and me, Republican & Democrat, Black & White, Conservative & Liberal, Gay & Straight, are getting fucked over repeatedly.
We need to stop fighting with each other and focus our frustrations where they can benefit all of us. This division is exactly what “they” want. There are 325 million angry people in this country and that terrifies the establishment, but our anger is misplaced. We are distracted.
The truth is – most Republicans aren’t white supremacists, and most Democrats aren’t ultra liberals who are so wrapped up in political correctness, that they say nothing of value for fear of insulting somebody. They’re the outliers. Most of us just want to live and let live.
Can you imagine the change we could enact if 325 MILLION people said enough?
I’m not talking armed revolution. I’m talking about things like $12,000 insurance policies with $7,500 deductibles that still don’t cover jack. If we all said fuck it, and refused to purchase health insurance, the system would collapse on itself and would force change. If we all ordered our medications from Canada for a fraction of what we pay here, the system would collapse. If we all refused Perdue drugs in protest of them flooding the market with oxycodone and decimating our population, Perdue would collapse.
I use health care as an example but it applies everywhere.
There are bigger things at play here than our personal feelings.
Edit: I had the phrase “Wake up sheeple” in here. People with sensitive proclivities took it VERY personal so I took it out so as not to distract the feeble minded from my overall sentiment. - Education and healthcare costs are spiraling out of reach of the common man.
- Don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it yet, but Elsagate. There’s a subreddit dedicated to it, r/elsagate.
You know how really young kinds like those mindless videos? Think something in the style of Teletubbies: no plot, no dialogue really, just bright colours and characters bopping around.
There’s a whole wealth of these kinds of videos on YouTube. Parents can use YouTube Kids, an app, to make sure their children are watching appropriate content. They load it up and let them go.
But someone, or some people, or something, is making these mysterious videos in the style of mindless children’s entertainment, except the content is super dark. They usually feature popular kids characters (Spiderman, the Minions, Mickey Mouse, or Elsa – hence the “Elsagate” moniker). The cartoons will feature these characters doing all sorts of bizarre things, like getting drunk and cutting their heads open, or peeing in the bathtub. Other examples include having teeth pulled, having needles, being kidnapped.
Besides the cartoons, there are also really disturbing live action videos, including this one where a kid is subjected to needles in her bum. Warning, it’s pretty disturbing. She clearly doesn’t want this, and her parents are exploiting her for YouTube views.
So, what’s it all about?
No one knows for sure. Could be a way to exploit algorithms, rack up views, and make money. Some people think it’s some kind of coded child pornography catalogue, where the videos are some kind of preview for the actual content you’ll see in the real video. Some people think it’s some kind of way to groom children. Others think it’s a 4chan-initiated prank.
Anyway, it’s really disturbing and I’m fascinated and confused.
TL;DR: read about Elsagate. - the US is actively aiding Saudi bombings of Yemen, and they target pretty indiscriminately, no one in the media wants to mention that.
- Internet privacy. As in privacy in general.
- The Australian government is seriously considering letting oil companies drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight.
This is a huge huge issue.
85% of the species found in the Bight are literally only found there. They exist no where else in the world
36 different types of whales and dolphins live in the bight, with their breeding grounds in the bight as well.
Its the heart of the Australian fishing industry, so byebye quite a bit of fish if there is an oil spill.
The Oil spill in Mexico which was the biggest in the world, happened in calm waters. The Bight is known for having some of the roughest waters in the world. If a spill occurs in the Bight, it will be almost impossible to contain, and will utterly fuck up the entire southern coast of Australia. From Western Australia to Tasmania.
So not only is Australia killing the Great Barrier Reef, but we are also very close (as in 2018 close) in letting huge oil companies come and try their luck in the Bight. - The economy is doing well, the job market is solid, we’re statistically very safe, we continue to make good progress in medicine, we’re making great progress towards renewable energy and electric vehicles, technology continues to make telecommuting easier, and benefiting the disabled, we continue to make progress on human rights, I could go on and on…
…and yet we don’t feel safe, we’re worried about jobs, we don’t eat well, we don’t get enough exercise, we worry about having the latest iPhone or console or car or house, we think the country that has been plodding along improving since inception is going to hell, and are killing ourselves directly or with drugs, medicine, food, alcohol, cigarettes, sedentary lifestyles, etc… and we can stop, but many of us don’t. - The dumbing down of society and the hijacking of all media by the corporations.
- The people of Flint, Michigan haven’t had clean drinking water since April 24th, 2014
- The student loan debt crisis
Jesus Christ this stuff needs to be taught in high school before children make decisions that could potentially ruin their lives just because they think going to college is the only option they have.
And, currently, the government is doing all it can to fuck students in the ass over student loan debt. For instance: even if you get your debt forgiven, it’s treated as taxable income so it’s not actually “forgiven” just reduced at best. Also, filing for bankruptcy does jack shit for student loan debt. It’s true a lot of people successfully pay off their debt, but there are a lot more people than you’d think that are absolutely drowning in it with no hopes of ever paying it off because of interest rates.
I get angry just thinking about it…..
Edit: “but if they take out loans why don’t they expect to pay them back???? Hurrrrdurrrrr” no shit. The issue is deeper than that. - The Great Barrier Reef has reached the point-of-no-return and will die off within the next 25 years. This cannot be undone.
27.The Troubled Teen Industry and the fact that as an American you can legally pay for the right to have your child kidnapped, taken away and abused until they’re compliant. - New technology and innovations will continue reduce the amount of workers needed to produce goods, and thus jobs will start to dry up. Even new AI are beginning to replace intellectual jobs (AI Lawyer).
Job market is gonna go through a serious makeover in the next 30 years. - Saudi Arabia is planning to go to war with Iran soon. In most of the media coverage I see, the saudi crown prince is shown as a bold but good guy, and everyone is watching and waiting how his bets will pay off. Well, I have a guess: a lot of people will die.
- Alcoholism can be easily treated with Naltrexone but because the patent is expired the drug companies make nearly no money from the drug, so there is no reason to tell people. It’s $1 a pill. It also works on opioids. Also the war on drugs is a massive failure and the US desperately needs to fix it’s prison system. Seems like what’s most important is whether or not to give tax breaks to the rich currently :(.
- The US retirement crisis.
If we think it’s bad that baby boomers won’t leave their jobs, imagine how bad it’ll be when Gen-Xers won’t either. It’s not reasonable to expect every American adult to save hundreds of thousands for an undetermined later date. 1.) People have financial crises, such as medical bills or being unemployed, that must be addressed before any long-term saving, and 2.) It’s totally against human nature for every single person to think and plan that far in advance. Like all other developed countries, we need a system that ensures retired persons can at least meet their basic food/shelter needs. Social security was intended to help with this, but we always hear that we can’t count on SS to be around. And w desperately need people to retire so the younger generations can join the workforce. Our system of 401Ks, no pensions, and meager Social Security support is a failure. - Gay conversion therapy is still legal and happening in 41 U.S. states and is currently covered by Medicaid. AKA tax dollars you pay go to this. Source Trevor Project Still Trying to Stop This
- All the plastic in the water supply seems like it’s going to cause a lot of problems.
- Some countries will not grow. Even if they do grow it will be far less than what is needed to achieve meaningful, sustainable development. The whole idea behind economic growth is that eventually poor countries will be rich and richer countries will be richer. This will not be the case for many, many countries. How do you deal with the reality that some places will be very poor indefinitely?
- China’s currency manipulation, at some point it will become a problem but they may fall under the to big to fail.
- Overpopulation. There needs to be a stigma over having a gaggle of children. Our schools are underfunded and overstuffed, our ocean is a husk of its former cornucopia-like self, and drinkable water, as a commodity, is going to ascend several tiers in terms of scarcity in the coming decades.
- Farmer Suicide.
In India over 100,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last decade due to corporate exploitation leading to a perpetual system of debt and neo-feudalism
Read:
The Patenting of Life, Limiting Liberty, and the Corporate Pursuit of Seeds for more info - With all this talk of mass shootings, I’d like to say this: We need to realize that the vast majority of gun deaths are caused by handguns. The handgun deaths are mainly due to gang activity. Gangs generally have power because they sell illegal drugs. If we legalize the drugs they sell, we will be taking the power away from the gang, thus minimizing gun deaths.
Edit: I was wrong, the leading cause of gun deaths is suicide. That means we need to work to make our society more meaningful to the individual, rather than ban guns and expect everyone to stop killing themselves. My overall point is that we have to look at the cause of a problem in order to fix it.
Also, I was originally way off on the amount of gun deaths per day, sorry! However, there are still about 100 gun deaths per day. That’s the equivalent of a major mass shooting every single day caused primarily by handguns. - The slow death of europe and it’s culture. I’m not one of those ‘white genoicde’ people, but I do think we’ll lose certain cultures and our way of life, it’ll happen slowly over the next hundred years, the climate change refugee crisis will be the final nail in the coffin for europe.
People here aren’t having enough children.
Mass migration from mainly muslim lands will mean they will replace us in several decades.
A lot of people are like ‘ah good no more white power bla bla bla’
I doubt they’ll be happy when half of europe is under sharia law.
I guess we can kiss goodbye to LGBT rights, equality for women and a slow erosion in certain rights and freedoms that we take for granted.
I try to let people know it might be a risk to let people from MENA countries in, but nobody gives a sht. They say it’s racist.
I don’t think it’s racist to say the majority of MENA countries have backwards views. That come from backwards cultures, where gay people are exectuted, there are regular forced marriages and stonings for things like adultery.
Why aren’t more people worried, if this is what’s replacing us ?
Muslims aren’t shy about wanting a caliphate or sharia.
A lot of muslims hate our way of life, so once their the majority here, things will start to change unfortunately.
And our governments are determined to make that happen for them.
It’s just sad. I love Europe. One of my favourite places. I hope I’m dead by the time it becomes totally islamic.
There’s a book called ‘Submission’ set in France, read it, it’ll inform people of what our future will be like. - Nestle drying up ground wells for their bottled water empire.
- Fat isn’t causing the obesity epidemic. Sugar is. I’m at work, can’t post my sources, but there is a lot of evidence showing fat is actually good for you (80% of your brain is fat and your cells need cholesterol to function) and sugar is killing us.
The food pyramid is complete backwards and doctors are pushing a high carb diet that is causing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and so much more. Most doctors don’t study nutrition more than a semester or 2! At the same time, the pharmacutical industry makes a lot more money pushing their medications and treatments than actually curing the disease with diet and exercise (which is possible and sustainable!)
Just browse numerous success stories. Cutting carbs and increasing fat not only leads to weight loss but also increased mood, greater energy, decreased brain fog, and so much more. - Refugee crises around the world, Rohingya Muslims, Syrians, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. These human beings are being treated worse than dogs and in some cases systemically murdered for their religion, skin color, etc. It is a huge problem that the US only fights about…meanwhile, (and I am sorry for being graphic and distasteful, but this is a horrific situation) babies are being gang-raped and thrown into bonfires in front of their mothers.
- Species are dying off at a rate 10000 times background levels. We are in the middle of the 6th major extinction on this planet.
Whaddaya Say?